


A (bird)Cage. (Day 30: Roommates)

by AsYouCommand (OminousHummingObelisk)



Series: AUgust All Year Long [8]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Blow Jobs, Captivity, Cunnilingus, Kidnapping, M/M, Masturbation, Other, Rape, Somnophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:55:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27754189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OminousHummingObelisk/pseuds/AsYouCommand
Summary: He flew, and when he flew, no pain could catch him.In which Pharma learns how love can be a prison, and how that prison might be escaped.
Relationships: Damus|Tarn/Pharma
Series: AUgust All Year Long [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1763485
Comments: 7
Kudos: 45





	A (bird)Cage. (Day 30: Roommates)

It was dark outside when Pharma heard the ping at his door. It was almost always dark outside, whether from the long night or from the blizzards' cloudcover, but this was an after-hours dark and he frowned as he looked up from his files and sent the unlock command. The door opened, and on the other side of it towered a being that he knew only by rumor and had secretly feared to encounter since he had arrived on Messatine two weeks before. Plating the just-so shade of Decepticon purple. Two fusion cannons mounted on the right arm. And that mask.

"Hello, Doctor." 

Pharma swallowed to loosen up his frozen vocal components. "Tarn." 

"'Commander' is my proper title, Doctor. Perhaps you should invite me in? We have some things to discuss." 

"I...hadn't received notice of your arrival." The security AI would have alerted him if a strange tank had casually entered the clinic and was wandering the halls, but he'd heard nothing from it. 

"We control your security system. It's been shut down for my convenience." Tarn gestured toward the interior of the office. "If I may?" 

"It seems that I have no choice. Why don't you come in." Pharma's entire body felt iced over. He wasn't ready to die. 

Tarn entered, sending his specs ahead of himself to the guest chair; as it reconfigured itself for his frame, he took a glass bottle and a pair of tumblers out of his subspace and proceeded to pour each of them a measure of the brightly-glowing, oddly thick fuel. Tarn settled himself comfortably in the chair, leaning back and crossing his legs. He put a glass straw into his drink and sipped it. Assuming that the fuel was at least somewhat safe, Pharma lifted his own glass with hands that trembled only slightly and then paused. "...This looks, moves, and vapor tests like innermost energon," he said softly. 

"Because that's what it is." Tarn took another sip and Pharma put the glass down. "Come now, don't be ungrateful. Would the mech who provided that be pleased to know that it was going to waste?" 

"I doubt that it was provided willingly." Pharma felt sick at the sight of his visitor's casual cannibalism and let the glass remain on his desk. He suspected that the donor was no longer among the living and therefore had no opinions about the use to which his fluids were being put. 

"Regardless." 

"Did you mention that you had something to talk about?" 

"Ah, down to business so quickly. But very well. As you no doubt have guessed from my comment regarding your security system, my team has complete control over this facility." 

"I see." 

"You, your staff, and your patients continue to exist because it pleases me to permit you to do so. Perhaps you already suspected that this was the case." 

"Yes, I...had considered the possibility." 

"Excellent. Then you understand your position in our negotiations." 

"Negotiations?" 

"Regarding how you may continue to remain in my good graces and thus keep yourself and your people unmolested." He spoke in a neutral tone with no unusual modifiers, but Pharma had a sense that the word had been strategically chosen. His tanks clenched harder. 

The jet clasped his hands atop his desk, looking downward, trying to maintain a semblance of dignity. At least he had determined that he was unlikely to be murdered tonight, since the commander had some motivation to keep the clinic intact. "I understand that I have no position to speak of." Resentment stirred underneath his terror, heralding the return of his accustomed hatred of all Decepticon-kind. 

"Then we will dispense with the back-and-forth and I will simply tell you what I require. You will maintain a supply of transformation cogs and install them in me whenever I wish. My people will be monitoring the operations to ensure that you take no...creative license with the procedures. And while I understand your dedication to your work, my orders take precedence over all else. If you fail to satisfy these requirements, a great deal of fuel will be shed, neither quickly nor cleanly. Am I clear?" 

"Yes." T-cogs. The chance of such transplants being necessary for legitimate medical reasons was almost nonexistent. Far more likely was an uncontrolled morphing addiction. Strange - he would not have expected someone like the leader of the DJD to have that manner of personal weakness, though the amount of murder that his team committed no doubt left him with enough cogs to support the habit - a luxury that most other addicts struggled to secure. 

"The operations will take place in a medbay under my control. The first of them will be...soon, I think. You will remain ready to move on my word." 

Pharma let his resentment show ever so slightly in his glare. "I see that I have no other option." 

"No, I think that we agree that you do not." Tarn sucked the last of his drink up through his straw and put the glass back in his subspace. He made no move to take Pharma's as he stood up, leaving the chair formatted to his shape. "I have quite enjoyed our conversation, Doctor. It's always pleasant when negotiations proceed smoothly. Until we meet again." He nodded the sketch of a bow and left the office. 

Pharma stared at the glass for long moments, trying to think of what to do with the life-fuel as fury began to return to his thawing senses. Finally he rose and shoved the whole thing into his office smelter chute, listening to the glass shatter far below. 

* * *

"Did you sample the innermost energon that I left for you when we last met, Doctor?" Tarn asked as he swung his legs off the operating table. 

"Of course not." Pharma was bent over the sanitation bath, immersed past his elbows, churning up a froth as he cycled swiftly through all of his various tools underneath the surface. 

"Such a rare vintage, gone to waste. You're a difficult mech to please." 

"I prefer rare vintages that don't involve murder. A good Macaalex Platinum, or an Endgame blend, maybe somewhere in the M22.34 century." 

"I would hesitate to say that any such luxury did not involve life-fuel on someone's hands at some point in the process of its creation, if only that of the laborers who suffered beneath the sorts of people who enjoyed such indulgences." 

Pharma sighed and grit his teeth, lifting his arms out of the bath. Decepticon priorities. 

"However, I may have several such blends in my personal store, coincidentally." 

Pharma paused in his toweling-off. "You collect rare engex?" 

"I collect many rare things. Including things which have vanished due to the pressures of war. It's a hobby of mine." 

"But I don't suppose that you would be inclined to share." 

"Why would I allow an Autobot oppressor to enjoy my hard-won treasures, I wonder?" 

Pharma was the oppressor in this relationship? "Because you're compelled by your kind and generous spark," he replied, freezing only afterward as he realized how badly Tarn might take the mockery. 

But the tank only chuckled, apparently willing to play along. "Well, you've caught me now. I suppose that I have no choice but to take you to my personal chambers and ensure your satisfaction." The jet remained frozen, spark sinking as he realized what he had done. "Come along, then," Tarn said as the medbay door opened for him, and Pharma dragged himself painfully into his captor's wake. 

He wasn't sure what he expected Tarn's quarters to be like, but what he saw surprised him. Thick silkweave carpets padded the bare metal floor, a light-and-water sculpture chimed softly in a corner, shelves rose on every side and displayed rows of texts and small objets d'art. The large, overstuffed furniture in Tarn's sitting area was upholstered in rich yet tasteful brocade and it looked as if the metal of his workdesk might be inlaid with real wood. The fireplace flared to life as Tarn walked past it, leaving Pharma standing just far enough inside that the hallway door closed behind him. 

There was so much to look at that the dread of what was to come drained from him and he found himself drawn to the large corner sculpture. He gazed in wonder at the tiny gravitational reversal modules that hovered almost invisibly in the air, driving the water to flow in elegant, branching parabolas that made the many shades of blue light ripple. Tarn approached from the side and Pharma absently accepted a glass from him, commenting, "It's a Vertigo. They said that his entire body of work burned with Praxus." 

"Clearly not all," Tarn said smugly. "I have several others in storage; this one is my favorite of the group. You have a fine eye for art, it seems. I wonder what you think of the rest of my decor?" He pointed upward and Pharma confusedly lifted his face. Panels of traditional art had been mounted flat on the ceiling, close together and framed as if they had been taken from a museum. The combination of styles was somewhat jarring - mineral pigment on silkweave here, psychedelic-inspired multilayered holograms there - but the collection indicated an appreciation for rarity and clear knowledge of the masters of various artistic schools. "I enjoy being able to lie back on my couch to look at them," Tarn clarified. "I wish that I had room to put a proper gallery together, but unfortunately most of the collection must be stored in a more compressed fashion." 

Pharma managed to keep his head back and sip from his glass without spilling down his cheeks. He started, looking down into the drink. "This is Endgame's M22.37." 

"M22.34, actually. But I'm pleased that you appreciate its quality. It puts my kind and generous spark at ease." 

Pharma ignored him and took another slow, wondering sip. "Blackhaze would spin in his grave if he knew that you were displaying his work next to anyone from the Tarnish Atavistic school." 

Tarn snickered. "Why do you think I did it? Blackhaze was an odious twit, even though he made such beautiful tempuras." 

And the conversation continued, to the apparent surprise of both of them. They drank perhaps a little too much of Tarn's rare engex as they argued companionably about long-dead creatives, and partway through the night Tarn led Pharma back to one of his several storerooms where he kept the rest of his collection so that the jet could burn with jealousy over all the late Silver Age microsculptures and lightfalls. The DJD was sitting on top of enough classical art to fill a small museum. 

Suddenly Tarn paused in mid-ramble. "The sun is coming up," he said. 

"I've been gone the entire night??" Pharma covered his mouth with a hand. He'd expected the operation to take no more than an hour, travel time included, and had told the staff that he was going out to stretch his wings. Maybe they thought he'd been grounded by a blizzard or something by this point. He immediately started assembling an excuse. 

"I also didn't expect to be occupied for this long. My team needs to be offplanet shortly." Tarn gazed into his drink thoughtfully. "I...confess that I had far less wholesome intentions for you when I brought you back to my quarters." 

Pharma lifted a brow. "I suppose it was lucky for me that I knew so much about art, then." 

"Indeed. I enjoyed the night far more than I would have if I had gone with my original plan. Thank you for the pleasant company, truly." 

And although something in him strained at the fact that he was saying it to a Decepticon, Pharma was honest when he said, "Thank you for the same. And for the engex." 

Tarn chuckled. "We've both had a bit too much, I think. You are safe to travel?" A movement of his head to the side suggested that he might also be embarrassed at inquiring about an Autobot's safety. 

"I'll engage my FIM chip, much as I wish I didn't have to." 

"Please do. Let me escort you to the door." 

* * *

The second time they met, they argued pleasantly about ancient literature and poetry. Tarn actually had a small collection of hardcopy texts that he kept inside stasis containers, but he was willing to take one of the more recent ones out to let Pharma page through it. "I never knew what scholars meant when they talked about the smell of old books," the jet said softly, turning the leaves with light touches. 

There was a blizzard two nights later, which was why, Tarn explained over the comm channel that he'd cracked, he didn't command Pharma to come to his base and continue their conversation. So they talked for hours over comms while they both did deskwork relevant to their duties and occasionally complained about it in confidentiality-respecting levels of detail. Tarn offered to send Pharma videos of some of his team's _artwork_ and Pharma turned him down, shuddering, reminded again of what sort of creature he was talking to. 

He was irritated when, a week later, Tarn _did_ order him to the DJD base for no other reason than conversation; it had been in the middle of a complete inventory and Pharma had had a hell of a time trying to make an excuse stick. He calmed down somewhat after Tarn recited quite a lot of poetry and moved the conversation into talk of gourmet fuel that both of them missed. 

The pattern continued in that way, Pharma attending Tarn - only occasionally with a t-cog - so that they could talk and laugh and complain. Several times the conversation drifted too close to the dangerous topics of politics and philosophy, and when the Autobot-Decepticon conflict entered their discussion enough to make both angry, Tarn would dismiss his doctor and they wouldn't speak for some time. Inevitably, though, he would contact Pharma again. The tank seemed to develop a hunger for the Autobot's company after a while, doggedly revitalizing the conversation during every visit so that they ended up talking all through the night despite Pharma's attempts to extricate himself before dawn. 

One night, a call came through to Pharma's onboard comm from an unknown frequency, long-distance, shocking him awake. "Who is this?" he growled. 

"It's me," said a soft voice on the other end. "I need to talk." 

"Tarn? Are you offplanet? I don't recognize—" 

"Yes, I'm on my ship. I just..." There was a strange, muted quality to his voice, a kind of frailty, as if something was about to break. "I just needed to talk to you." 

Pharma rubbed his eyes, resigning himself to getting very little sleep. "About what?" 

"About anything. Please, I just need to hear you speak." 

"Anything...?" The jet pressed his chevron into his hands, trying to clear his head enough to comply with the odd request. "Um. We... Tomorrow we have twelve more filter replacements for the miners in Sector Epsilon. The matrix stone there has a particle quality that clogs them twice as fast and they develop respiratory strain because of it. I'm setting up a schedule for them to just come in and have it done more often than all the others..." 

"Lazy of your predecessor to not handle that before you," Tarn said with a ghost of a chuckle, as if it was difficult for him to participate. 

"Well, it's my problem now. I'm thinking there must be something similar in Sector Delta, where they keep having these chronic joint rust conditions that has to be due to some kind of seepage..." 

He went on like that, talking about anything at all that came into his mind, even attempting to describe in layman's terms how part of the secondary spark circulation and containment system worked, and slowly Tarn's voice strengthened until he seemed much like his ordinary self again. 

"If my clock is correct, then it's near dawn on Messatine," he finally said. "Per our tradition, I must let you go. Thank you for your help. I'll see you soon." 

The link closed before Pharma could ask about exactly what he'd been helping with. 

* * *

When Tarn returned after that strange call, something had changed. It seemed that he had suffered some kind of significant injury, which had been repaired adequately by an autodoc and was healing well; Pharma checked his internals over and completed the work, bemused that Tarn avoided talking about the event. The commander was more interested in Pharma's daily life and thoughts about random pieces of literature that he'd been reading while away. Tarn looked at the doctor as they spoke, of course, but his gaze seemed deeper somehow, as if he were trying to memorize every movement that he saw. He seemed simultaneously distracted and intent, restlessness hovering about him as he clung eagerly to their conversation. Pharma became increasingly uncomfortable as the night went on, though he knew better than to try and cut the discussion short. Tarn kept them talking past dawn, and only reluctantly let it end after Pharma repeatedly reminded him of the time. 

The tank looked down into his engex meditatively. "It is so hard to watch you go, sometimes," he said. 

Pharma squirmed internally, uncertain of how to respond to such a sentiment. "You can always call. When I'm not working." 

"Yes, work takes up quite a bit of your time..." Tarn had developed a brooding air. 

"Well, best that I get back to it, then." Pharma tossed back the last of his drink and stood up. 

Tarn was slow to stand. "I must leave today to continue the hunt. It wasn't yet time to return to base, but...I needed to see you. Hopefully it will not be too much longer before I can return." 

"Ah...of course. But these things take as long as they take, as you've told me." 

"Unfortunately." He seemed sad as he walked Pharma back to the entrance. 

* * *

"Do you like it here on Messatine?" Tarn asked him in the middle of their next conversation, when they were both only on their second drink. Oddly, they weren't drinking anything stronger than usual, but the blend was hitting Pharma particularly hard. 

"Of course not. It's dark, it's cold, and half the time it's not even possible to fly from all the storms." 

"You wouldn't be losing much if you were to leave, then." 

"Regardless, my work is here, so I wouldn't. I'm enough of a soldier to never abandon my post," Pharma said, smiling, as he took another sip and felt the haze come down on him even more strongly. 

Tarn was watching him with that uncomfortably absorbing gaze. "There is no shame if one leaves it without choosing to." 

Pharma had just enough clarity left to activate his diagnostic suite and identify the powerful drug in the engex before he blacked out. 

* * *

When he woke, he was looking up at the brocaded canopy of a four-poster bed. Soft, thick blankets were underneath him and there was a hum just on the edge of his hearing that he gradually identified as ship engines firing. _What—_ He tried to sit up and barely got his shoulders off the bed before he was yanked to a halt with a clatter. He looked down at himself, trying to move all his limbs, finding that there were bands around his wrists and ankles and chains magnetized to those bands; the chains trailed away around the edges of the bed, keeping him on his back on one side of the mattress. 

He fought them, like the horrified prisoner that he was, the links clanging as he struggled. He tried to unfold tools to cut through the metal, but the bands around his wrists prevented the plating from moving and he couldn't reach anything with his fingers. 

He thought of screaming for help, but he'd seen enough of the room in his struggles to know that it almost certainly belonged to Tarn - it must have been his quarters aboard his ship. There would be no one here on the DJD's craft who would be willing to help him, and he feared what would happen if he got the attention of Tarn's teammates with his cries. 

Pharma pulled uselessly on his bonds until he lost hope, and then tears gathered in his eyes - from rage, to hide the terror, and he felt even more rage at himself for being so weak as to cry where his captor might see him. He couldn't even wipe away the carbon trails on his cheeks, humiliatingly. 

He should never have forgotten that Tarn was the enemy - a Decepticon, not a fundamentally decent person, no matter how cultured he seemed or how personable he acted. He should never have given the monster the slightest trust. If only he'd been in the habit of testing every drink he'd ever had, but no, he'd been too enraptured with the rarity to hesitate, and now— 

He'd brought all of this on himself. If not for his inattention, Tarn would never have been able to capture him so easily. The furious tears threatened to start again, but he closed his eyes against them. 

There was no other sound beyond the engines for a long, long time. Then he heard the muffled sound of a door opening and closing a few moments before the door on one wall of the room opened - the rooms must be arranged in a series. As he expected, Tarn came in. He moved as if he were wearied, and fuel clung to the edges of his plates and his struts as if he'd only given himself a quick wipedown with a cloth. He paused halfway across the room to look at Pharma, who glared venomously back, and then he continued to the door on the opposite wall, returning a moment later with a solvent-soaked cloth. He approached Pharma's side of the bed and reached out toward his face. Pharma hissed and jerked away from the touch, but Tarn pursued, holding his prisoner's chin firmly with one hand as he wiped the carbon away. 

"I never should have trusted you," Pharma snarled as Tarn sat down on the bed next to him. 

"You can still trust me," Tarn said gently, unconcerned. 

"To what, be a selfish monster? Take advantage of everything you can get your hands on?" 

"To take care of you." Tarn laid a hand on Pharma's forearm. The jet tried to pull away, but the chains had insufficient give. 

"Put me back." 

"That's no longer possible, even if we were not already offplanet." He paused, as if gathering himself. "I realized recently...that I care for you far more deeply than I had imagined. Our conversations, they became so precious to me that they consumed my thoughts. I suffered every time you left me until I could no longer stand it." 

"And that made you justify chaining me to your bed??" 

"I love you." 

"I don't care! What, did you think that this was going to make me love you back?" 

"I reasoned that you would never stay with me voluntarily. You would never give me a chance to prove myself to you. I hope that when you see how devoted I am—" 

"Devoted to what? Rape?" 

He had the sense of Tarn frowning behind his mask. "I would have thought that you'd have a better opinion of me than that. You can imagine that if I intended to do such a thing, it would have been done already." 

"Oh, I'm sure you'll get around to it if you can justify _this_ ," Pharma snarled. 

Apparently insulted, Tarn stood up and moved to the foot of the bed, where the chains restraining Pharma's legs were magnetized to the bedframe. They must have been controlled by wireless command, as one of them came free when Tarn took hold of it. Pharma immediately resumed thrashing, trying to kick his captor, but Tarn simply continued to hold the chain in one hand and the leg could only jerk uselessly against it. The tank rolled his wrist, wrapping the links around his palm in a coil, spreading Pharma's legs slowly as he dragged one of them toward himself. Pharma spat and struggled and swore, but his enemy's casual strength was so much greater than his own that his efforts won him nothing. Tarn could tell when he sent software commands to lock his hip before he was spread wide enough for the tank to comfortably fit between his thighs; the chain remagnetized to the bed and Tarn commented, "If I wanted to force you, I would think nothing of tearing your hip from its socket. And I could just as easily rip your panels free. There is no need to drug you for me to have you. I can take anything I want anytime I want." 

Pharma's ventilation system heaved as he glared murderously at the Decepticon, daring him to try it, determined to kill himself if necessary to ward off the defilement. 

"But I choose not to because I care about you. Your desires matter to me." He demagnetized the far end of the chain again and slowly let it loosen until Pharma was able to keep his legs tightly closed, then he reattached it. "Now do you see that I have nothing but respect for you?" 

"Not enough to let me go, obviously." 

"You would not give me a chance otherwise. When I feel as if you have understood what I need you to see, there will, of course, be no need to keep you restrained." 

"As if that will ever happen," Pharma hissed venomously. 

"I have faith that it will," Tarn replied. "And you know that my faith is unbreakable." Before Pharma could formulate another reply, Tarn stood, clearly ending their exchange. "Rest now, my dear doctor." 

* * *

Tarn spent a great deal of time in the outermost room, where Pharma supposed that his public workspace was located, but he came back to his bedroom daily to attempt to revitalize their accustomed conversation about creativity and nostalgia. Pharma alternated between hateful glares and mute staring at a far corner of the room. Tarn always fell into silence eventually, gazing reproachfully at his supposedly-beloved prisoner and occasionally emitting a long-suffering sigh before giving up the attempt. 

The sameness of the room was grating on Pharma within only a few days, making him ache for any kind of novel stimulation, but he refused to give into his captor's desire for interaction. 

Eventually, there came a day when Tarn demagnetized his cuffs, gripping him hard by his upper arm as he led the jet over to a small side table with two chairs. "It's time for the periodic maintenance on your tools, dear one." Pharma dragged his feet as he was hauled forward, but he saw, laid out on the table, all the equipment necessary for the proper cleaning of a medical build's internal equipment. Of course Tarn would have done the research on how to take care of his prize. 

"As if it's even necessary," Pharma growled. "I don't expect that I'll ever use them again." 

Tarn looked at him in surprise. "You'll certainly have the opportunity to use them once you're free. My team needs regular upkeep and repair, and we currently have only an automated system to rely on. You will be extremely valuable to more than just myself." 

Pharma allowed himself to be seated across the table from the tank, who released one of the cuffs around a wrist. Immediately, the jet transformed his hand into a heavy armor saw, which Tarn pinned just as quickly to the table before it could activate. "Listen to me," the Decepticon said, low and controlled. "I am under no obligation to provide this service. I want to do it because I expect you to care about it, and I want to respect your desires. However, I am just as content to let your systems fuse from disuse, if you choose to prioritize resistance over your health. I will put you back on the bed if you wish. Now, choose." 

Pharma grit his teeth in fury, but his whole being rejected the thought of his medical tools rotting inside of him from lack of use, regardless of whether he would ever use them again. He refolded the saw and spread all the devices inside his thumb instead, beginning the sequence of the procedure. "I would prefer to do this myself. I don't need another set of hands." 

"I'm aware," Tarn said calmly as he selected the correct micropick and cleaning solution. "But I will be the one to do it for you, so that you will understand the degree to which I am prepared to care for you. If I perform any steps incorrectly, please do bring it to my attention. I wish to do it properly." 

Pharma hated the fact that Tarn had actually memorized the maintenance steps exactly, cleaning all the tools and internal mechanisms only slightly less thoroughly than Pharma himself would have done, and then only because he clearly feared scraping too hard in all the crevices. It was an admirable job, regardless, and the doctor resentfully folded up the last of one hand and began to open the other, silently submitting to his unwanted suitor's attentions. 

Afterward, Tarn herded him into the washracks, applied some foaming cleanser to a mesh, and began to rub down Pharma's plating. The jet flinched back and pressed himself into a corner to avoid the touch. "At least leave me the dignity of washing myself," he snarled. 

"I have no unwholesome intent whatsoever." 

"I don't care. I don't want you touching me. Are you going to respect me or not?" 

Tarn sighed and handed him the cloth and bottle, watching keenly as Pharma cleaned himself as if the jet could somehow use the shower supplies to engineer an escape. The doctor turned to face the wall as he hastily wiped down his modesty panels. Pharma rinsed off and allowed himself to be nudged into the air dryer. Hatefully, he submitted to allowing Tarn to polish the backside of his body, since there was no automated assistance system in the washracks that he could see. 

He fought, knowing the futility of it, when Tarn began to lead him back to the bed, and the tank only sighed and scuffed up his prisoner's new polish as he pinned down each limb in turn and reattached all of the chains. Pharma swore at him and struggled against the cuffs while Tarn watched him exhaust himself with infinite patience. 

Each day, the tank helped him lift his torso to the extent allowed by the bindings and attempted to convince Pharma to refuel from a cube, but Pharma always refused. The lack of activity was causing his fuel levels to drop only slowly, anyway, and he hated the idea of giving Tarn the pleasure of feeding him. He had a sense that his captor was permitting him his defiance only up to a certain point, and he wondered what would happen once Tarn gave up on fueling him normally. 

Every night, he had to endure the tank sleeping on the other side of the bed, facing him, his engine purring gently as he gazed at his prisoner until he drifted off into defrag. 

Pharma himself rarely slept. 

* * *

Another week went by, with Tarn performing another round of maintenance on him before rechaining him to the bed as before. Pharma's fuel levels had been close to maximum when he had been captured, but now he was just above the level of stasis. On that day, Tarn sat down on the side of the bed, as if he were once again preparing to attempt a conversation. This time, though, he gravely said, "I have performed your fuel usage calculations, so I know that you are nearing the end of your tank. I have tried to fuel you as respectfully as possible, but you are leaving me with no choice. Drink today, or I will splice a feed into your lines." Pharma clenched his jaw, still looking away, weighing which method would best serve his dignity and defiance. Tarn's voice softened. "You are bored here, aren't you?" 

"Yes." The jet had no resistance to answering that question. He had been trapped in the sameness for so long that he felt his mind creaking under the strain. He'd tried every possible method to entertain himself by looking at the contents of the room; he had forced himself into defrag just to make the time pass until his system started waking him up instantly due to having no more work to do on his files. He had passed the point of misery days ago. 

"I have tried to entertain you myself, but you have been avoiding all of my attempts at recapturing your interest. That grieves me, but I have no desire to see you suffer. I have prepared a database of all the materials that I possess - copies of all the art, the literature, music, pre-war architecture, everything that I have kept records of. I would gladly give that to you, to ease the upset of you submitting to refueling." 

"...Very well." Allowing himself to be force-fed would be giving up too much of his scanty autonomy, he felt. He drank, though he was disgusted the entire time by the feeling of joy and comfort that surged in Tarn's field as he held the cube to Pharma's mouth. 

Afterward, Tarn wheeled in a large box and locked it in place at the bedside. When he began pulling cables out of the side, Pharma realized that it was a huge server tower, larger than any that he'd previously seen. The thought of how much information might be stored in such a machine made his mouth water, though he tried to keep his eagerness hidden. 

"Let me access your primary sensory data ports, please," Tarn requested, and Pharma hesitated only a moment before turning his head to the side and sliding away several panels on the back of his helm. Tarn plugged in the heavy cables, screwing them firmly into the sockets, and arranged them carefully so that they wouldn't be strained as he laid Pharma's head back on the pillows. Pharma rushed to access the databases and found an unbelievable trove of information, everything that Tarn had promised. He couldn't help but feel almost painfully grateful, though he said nothing and only closed his eyes as he sank into the experience of the Decepticon's art collection, scanned in perfect four-dimensional detail. 

"I hope it pleases you," Tarn said softly, and Pharma heard him leave the room. 

* * *

Tarn was not to be upstaged by the database, however. He shut off access to it every time he came to sit on the bed and talk at his prisoner while Pharma stubbornly ignored him and craved the return of the information. He thought sincerely, shamefully, of trying to bargain with Tarn - perhaps a short conversation in exchange for having the tank leave the room sooner instead of wasting hours that Pharma could spend immersed in all the wonders of the collection. It might be worth it, he thought, just to have all that time to himself... But he feared the slippery slope of giving into Tarn's need for conversation and suffered through each one in silence. 

Once, Tarn paused his talking early on in the session and sat thoughtfully for a long while before gently laying a hand on Pharma's belly, just intimate enough to be suggestive, yet innocent enough to be relatively inoffensive. "My treasure," he said, and oh, how Pharma hated all his little endearments, "may I make love to you?" 

"Absolutely not," the jet spat, thrashing in his bonds in an effort to throw the hand off of himself. 

Tarn sighed, stood, and closed himself up in the washracks, where he stayed for some time. When he came out, the slight scent of ozone suggested to his captive what he had done while inside. Tarn did not sit down again, which made hope surge in the jet that the hated conversation would be over sooner than usual, but the tank left without turning the server back on. 

Pharma was forced to suffer through another full day without any mental stimulation at all. 

Those occurrences continued periodically, with a slowly increasing frequency. Sometimes Tarn would sit back down, still stinking of his frustrated, temporarily-satisfied lust, and continue talking until he gave up for the night. Sometimes he would leave early and _accidentally_ forget to turn the server back on, but he clearly came to regret his pettiness. More commonly, he would wait to make his request until the end of a session, turn on the machine when he was inevitably refused, then remove himself to masturbate before curling up on his side of the bed. 

His captive became used to the faint, disgusting scent of his spent body. 

* * *

"If you loved me," Pharma once tried, "you would take off your mask for me." 

Tarn sat for long moments, head bowed, clearly struggling with the request. "...I would," he said at last, "if I knew that you loved me in return. Then I would share everything that belonged to me with you. But until that day...you will never see me without it." 

* * *

The single cubes that Tarn fed to him were enough to keep his systems running well for one or two days at a time, but he could not survive on them indefinitely, not even at his slowed rate of consumption. Tarn was always reliably on time until, perhaps three months or more after his kidnapping (so Pharma estimated), he didn't return at all one day. Pharma reveled in the relative freedom from the unwanted company, losing himself happily in the vaults of information inside the precious server. He was rereading Everdive's complete corpus and was in even less of a mood to be disturbed than usual. 

The second day without Tarn was still pleasant, but a little more concerning. His fuel levels were steadily dropping, and he could think of no reason why the tank would have given up on his project so suddenly. Pharma rewound the last set of interactions with his captor and could find nothing unusual about his refusals or Tarn's calm responses. The Decepticon let Pharma's maintenance and shower day pass without reappearing. 

The third day, he hit critical levels. Pharma attempted to hold onto every drop of fuel left in his near-empty tank by eschewing his typical database-diving and keeping his lights and optics turned off, but nothing could stave off the stasis for long. His consciousness was fading, darkness creeping up on him, and he felt greater despair than he ever had since his kidnapping - was this how he would die, starving to death while chained to his enemy's bed? He wanted to struggle, to find some way to fight it, but fighting would draw him down into the dark even faster, and he could do nothing. Grieving for all his losses, he finally blacked out. 

* * *

A hand was gently touching his cheek, the thumb brushing over the corner of his eye, as he slowly returned to life. He felt fuel steadily flowing back into his body and eventually detected a spliced connection into one of his torso lines - an external feed. Mind blank, he opened his eyes slowly and momentarily did not recognize the masked hulk who was leaning over him. Then those blessed few seconds passed and he turned his head to escape Tarn's hated touch. 

"You were not in stasis long," the Decepticon informed him, letting him pull away from the hand. "My team doesn't know that you're here. I was injured in a hunt and have been recuperating in the medbay for days now, unconscious; I have been fearing for you ever since I was allowed to wake." Pharma glanced at him and saw large portions of his torso armor still a patchy gray where his nanites had not yet populated the reconstructed areas. 

"I wish they'd gotten you," the jet said bitterly. "It would have been worth it to starve if you'd died." 

Tarn ignored the statement. "I've previously been able to avoid longer hunts, but this event makes me realize that there will likely be more times in the future when I'll be unable to attend to you daily. I cannot allow you to fall into stasis if that happens. I will acquire a more long-term fuel supplement pump and keep you hooked up as you are, and I will turn it on each time I leave for the hunt. I promise, this will never happen again." He gently stroked Pharma's canopy and the jet squirmed unhappily under the caress. 

* * *

Although Pharma considered himself to be strong of spark, he fell deeper into despair as the months went on. This was not only because he was plugged into a database (which he had exhausted) to give him some escape from monotony and had a fuel feed spliced into his lines to keep him alive while he was left alone for days and had an enemy pressuring him to return his twisted love. 

He was also being slowly driven insane by sky-hunger. 

Flightframes felt a need to fly at least once per standard week to keep the hunger completely at bay, but the itch began to grow if they could not, until it became an all-consuming imperative. It had ground against Pharma's consciousness after the first month had passed, then it continued to drive into his mind until it was filling all his limbs with phantom aches, crying out for him to transform and fly. By the fourth month, he had significant difficulty concentrating; by the fifth, he could barely defrag from the loudness in his mind; by the sixth, he was so drenched in suffering that he couldn't even focus on Tarn's interactions at all and began to slip into a dazed catatonia. 

He felt fingers rapping gently on his canopy and realized that someone had been quietly calling his name for some time. He fought his way free from the misery long enough to turn his head and stare blearily up at the other person. The person laid an ice-cold, damp cloth across his chevron and the sensory shock brought him back to himself more fully. It was Tarn leaning over him, he observed dimly. 

"Pharma, I know why you have been fading away from me even more than you might otherwise," the tank said. "I wanted to wait for you to ask me for help. Surely that is not too selfish of me, wanting my beloved to ask me a favor so that I could have the pleasure of granting it? But you have done this instead. You are letting yourself fall into madness from the sky-hunger." He sighed. "My love, I am familiar with all possible forms of suffering known to our species. To refuse flight to a flier is an often-used form of torture, and I have never wanted to torture you. You have done this to yourself by refusing to reach out to me when you were in need. But I cannot allow you to leave me like this. I've found another gift for you - a flight simulator." 

The word _flight_ was nearly the only thing that dropped into his mind from all those words that flowed over him. He made a soft noise of need, already drifting back down into himself. 

The was a series of clatters and clunks as Tarn opened the server cabinet and added more hardware to it, then hooked himself into the module and finished the full-immersion VR setup. Finally, he let the program into Pharma's sensory feed and the jet blinked as his vision disappeared, replaced with a startup interface that was too complicated for his suffering mind to comprehend. 

"I will set the landscape for you this first time, because you are too indisposed to do it yourself. In the future, you may fly wherever you wish. But for now, something simple - clear skies over an ocean." Various options selected themselves and then Tarn cut himself out of the system as it loaded. 

Pharma found himself standing on a flat island of packed earth in the middle of an endless sea of mercury. A few water-vapor clouds floated in a blue sky overhead. He could feel the wind on his plating, hear the lapping of the waves against the island, smell all the complex scents of earth and sky and liquid metal. It was pleasantly warm, with the rays of the small, bright sun beginning to heat his armor. He looked up and realized that there were no bindings on his body at all, and that meant— 

He flung himself into the sky, misjudging the length of his takeoff just enough to spray mercury against his underside before he curled himself upward into the air. Higher and higher he climbed, pushing his engine until it howled, but he never received redline warnings and his fuel gauge never dropped. He sliced through the clouds in vast arcs and the suffering dropped away from him; the relief of its departure was so vast that it trembled through him with a physical bliss, a wash of rapture so great that he could barely see where he was flying. The joy remained with him as he looped and dove, watching his colors reflected in the surface of the sea before he rocked up onto his side and plunged one wingtip down into the mercury, kicking up a spray behind him as he sliced through it. 

He could not have said how long he flew, only that it was the most perfect thing that he had ever experienced. And then a countdown from ten appeared in front of him, hovering in space no matter where he flew, and a voice that he remembered entered the interface. "Ten seconds, beloved, and then you come back to me." 

Ten seconds later, the VR data dropped out of his feed and he cried out from the loss of it, straining upward at where the sky had been and finding himself held down by chains. Tarn's hand was on his canopy again, as if the weight of his touch could ever be soothing. 

"Don't worry, my dear. There will be enough in the future, I promise. You cannot spend all of your time in VR; it's bad for one's health." 

Pharma could not have cared less. He needed it. The memory of the joy still shuddered through him and he knew that he would never forget it. 

Tarn seemed oddly breathless himself. "Your field...," he said hesitantly. "I have never felt anything like it. I wish that I could bring you to feel such a thing when you are here with me... I will make it a condition: you will only use the simulator when I am here beside you." 

An easy concession. All Pharma wanted now was the sky. 

* * *

He began to lose track of time. His chronometer still worked, but its information was irrelevant; Pharma spent his time prowling through the database's too-familiar filesystems, frustrated by its insufficiency. Time was now only the flight simulator and the gray periods when he was without it. He no longer suffered from the sky-hunger, but he suffered now from the lack of his most perfect escape - the feeling of the wind over his wings, the scents and sights of the outside world, the freedom to choose anywhere that he would like to visit on his flights. 

Always, before turning on the simulator, Tarn settled himself on the edge of the bed and held Pharma's hand, which the jet permitted only because he wanted nothing to stand in the way of the system's activation. The tank bent over his captive until his mask was almost the only thing that could be seen before the startup interface loaded in Pharma's vision. 

One night, as Tarn was once again holding a conversation with his unresponsive beloved, Pharma turned and murmured, "Wellspring was an untalented hack who unjustly made a fortune just by throwing paint on bare mesh." 

Tarn froze, utterly floored by the interaction, and finally said, "I absolutely agree. Tell me more." 

And Pharma did, his voice easily growing hoarse as he talked more than he had in months. After a little while, though, he asked, "You know, all of this is tiring me out quite a bit... Do you think that I could relax with the simulator a little?" 

"Yes, of course," Tarn said, and thankfully kept the conversation going for only a short while before starting up the program as requested. Pharma felt a burst of victory thrill through him - he'd found a way to manipulate his captor into freeing him a little more often, even if the simulator sessions after the conversations turned out to be rather brief. But he didn't care. Any time spent inside of the program was better than the pain of living without it. 

He didn't know how long it was before he started coming back from his flights at times to smell that familiar whiff of ozone even though Tarn was still there holding his hand; the tank must have left partway through the flight to relieve himself before coming back to attend to his unconscious beloved. 

And then, he began feeling a touch of sensory feedback from his body as he flew, something that his mind flagged as a change in his environment, enough to notify him of it. It was what felt like something pressed to his mouth, kissing him gently, over and over. But he was flying, and he ignored it in favor of his joy. 

It was during one of the longer simulator sessions that the feedback notified him of something even more complex happening to his unresponsive body, asking him if he wanted to cancel the program to attend to it. His leg was no longer chained, and was instead lifted up and to the side while a large frame awkwardly fit itself under the knee. Tiny points of sharpness were delicately picking at the edges of his modesty panels until they could be manually transformed back, and then something wet and soft and mobile slicked across his closed valve. It lapped frantically at him, and the opening around it sucked at him, and he felt automatic pleasure rising out of the simple mechanical action of sensation being applied to that sensitive part of him. There was no question of canceling the program, and he flew on as he felt himself begin to spread under the phantom ministrations until the shape was rooting inside the reach of his protoform petals and licking deep inside his channel. He dove, feeling cold wind sliced in half by his wings, and then a climax took him and was folded in together with the bliss of his flight, ignored amid his happiness. 

There was nothing amiss when he came back, all the chains in place and Tarn faithfully sitting by his side, holding his hand. "Did you have a pleasant flight?" the Decepticon asked, and Pharma stared wordlessly, expressionlessly, at him. After long moments, Tarn released his hand, his fingers curling into fists in his lap as his gaze darted away. He said nothing more and avoided Pharma's eyes as he tidied the room almost compulsively before laying down to defrag as if nothing unusual had happened. 

There was no feedback from his body during the next several flights, but then the kisses returned insistently, and the leg was lifted and the questing feeling descended again to make him wet, make him spread, make him come, and he did all those things detachedly, embraced by the artificial wind. When he returned to his perfectly ordinary surroundings, Tarn didn't speak to him and wouldn't look at him. 

Talking was the price of the extra sessions in the simulator. Pharma attempted to resist a little toward the beginning, trying to make himself again like stone, unmoving in the face of Tarn's attempts to communicate, but then his captor would go about his business as usual and Pharma was left with only the occasional flights intended to keep his sky-hunger at bay. Finally, he could no longer bear it and talked as long as he could stand with Tarn every night before wheedling a bit of simulator time out of him. 

Then the bodily feedback changed again, and when the sensation arrived on his body it settled instead over the closed hatch of his spike. There it remained, patiently licking at the iris, until Pharma became annoyed enough to uncover himself. Then there was more of the same, more that he ignored as he whirled great loops across the sky, vaguely aware of how the stimulation around his spike had made it extend fully into the sucking opening. He flew straight upward, driving toward the white circle of the sun, the pull of gravity like the last draw of a mouth around him that made him spill down the other's throat. 

The next time it happened, he felt the wetness pull away from his member just as he began to tip over, just as the pleasure peaked inside the simple, perfect happiness of the flight. Fluid erupted from his tip and he felt it shower down over himself as it sprayed against something hovering close above it. Once again, everything was perfectly in order when accursed Tarn pulled him out of the simulator. 

It sucked him hard again the next time and then something else descended, a flower of thick, firm masses around a wide hole, pressure on his hips like the arch of spread thighs. It ground down hard against him, the hole too wide to close tight around his length, the body above him leaning this way and that to rub him up against different places inside of it. It was awkward and even easier to dismiss than the rest of what had been done to him; he emptied himself inside of the hole more in response to what happened in his flight, when he drifted downward and let the belly of his altmode skate across the surface of the ocean. Only then did the hole tighten, again and again and again, the spreading forms clutching hard at him as it did so. 

For some time, the experiences became more frequent until some kind of contact happened every time he flew, even the brief flights after their conversations, which lasted just long enough for the dim sensations to finish him before he was brought back. Tarn's silence afterward became ever more profound somehow, as if he had locked down all his speech; he came to bed now with that utter hush wrapped around himself, and he had long ago stopped asking Pharma to make love. 

And then once, after Pharma's valve had peaked, sucking hard on the agile curl thrust deep inside of it, there was something more. Absently, he felt both legs unchained and splayed wide, and something broad and round pressed firmly against the barely-closed spread of his petals. It pushed deep, sliding on the bit of wetness still left inside the valve, a great hard length that he felt himself straining to accept. It extended so far into him that it was as if his components were being pushed out of shape around it, it was so long and firm, and then it began to move. 

The wind was over him; the wind bore him up and kissed every inch of him and let him rise and fall in perfect sweetness as he felt his limp body jostling underneath an overshadowing form, pushed and pulled as the thing inside of him penetrated him over and over again in short, fast thrusts. He didn't care how long it went on, how his hip-joints stretched below the heavy shape, how the object held itself deep inside him and released blooms of thick, hot wetness. He didn't notice when it left and whatever was done to him afterward. The clouds were whispering love across his wingtips. 

When he returned, his lower body ached and Tarn was sitting on one of the chairs at the maintenance table, the server cable stretched to its full length to reach the port in his head. His hands were clenched and his face turned aside. When he came to bed, for the first time that Pharma could recall, he slept with his back to his captive. 

Pharma no longer objected to maintenance; he realized vaguely that despair must have overcome him, as he rarely thought at all anymore about true freedom in which he might use his tools for anything. His life was now bent around the easy, artificial freedom of the software sky. He stopped insisting on cleaning himself in the shower, letting a wondering, deeply honored Tarn soap and rinse him. His body felt like only a vessel now, only something that held his mind until he could be plugged back into the server and released again into the database and the beloved simulator. 

He recalled that, long ago, Tarn had openly valued Pharma's body and was likely the source of the dim attentions that Pharma felt as he flew. He strategized, careless of himself, considering how he might use that body as leverage to get more of what he treasured most. Nothing else mattered. 

The opportunity came sooner than he thought it would. Tarn paused in the middle of their conversation one night and said, haltingly, "Pharma, I... Please understand how deeply I care for you. I don't wish you to feel any...any pain, any suffering of any kind. I would never intentionally hurt you." 

"I know," Pharma answered easily. 

"I love you. I feel nothing but love for you. You know that, don't you?" 

"I do." 

"I hope...someday, you will forgive me for what I've done to you, and you will be able to love me as well." 

"I do, Tarn," Pharma told him. Words were empty, only sounds, only a means to an end. "I love you. I've been waiting for you to ask me for a long time now." 

Tarn sat, stunned, his eyes wide and bright behind his mask. "...You love me?" 

"I do." 

The tank sat in total silence, utterly still, as if petrified by the revelation. Finally, he whispered, "I had not dared to even imagine this moment. I think I had given up hope that it would come." 

Good, yes, the words were having the desired effect. "You're so precious to me, Tarn. You've been so good to me." Pharma shifted his legs, as well as he could with the chains, indicating that he was attempting to spread them. "Will you make love to me?" He bit his tongue now, knowing that he could not ask for his prize until after the act was over. When he was dazed and sated, high on the declaration of love, Tarn would easily cave to any request Pharma would put to him. But for now, patience. 

"I would do anything for you," Tarn breathed. 

Pharma triggered his modesty panels back, angling his hips up toward his false lover, and Tarn stood and released the chains from Pharma's legs entirely. Just as the jet was about to part them, Tarn climbed onto the bed and straddled his thighs, opening his own panels. The tank's equipment was more ready than Pharma's - perhaps he was continually in a state of frustrated lust around his prisoner - with his valve immediately beginning to fold outward and his spike extending halfway as soon as they were bared. He leaned back, his eyes fixed on his beloved, and began to stroke his valve. 

Pharma watched him, trying to pretend as much interest as he could as Tarn played with himself, teasing and pinching and rubbing the protoform until he was well-spread and dripping. The sight did nothing to arouse him, but Pharma knew that he needed to keep up appearances and, as he murmured appreciatively at his captor, he began to imagine the many worlds inside the simulator and the way the suns felt against his plating, the way fresh air smelled, the way the horizons were always infinitely far away. The memories of all his joy made him erect, and his length arose between Tarn's thighs as the tank turned his gaze to it hungrily. 

Tarn gathered up a thick collection of his own fluids on his fingers and reached down to wrap them around Pharma's cable, stroking the slick up and down it with a sigh. "You are so perfectly beautiful. I have waited for this for so long." Then he lifted himself up, arranging himself above his love and lowering himself down over the spike with a shiver of bliss. His fully-spread valve was too wide to close tightly around the erection, but he moved himself to and fro as he rode it, rubbing it eagerly against his inside. 

Pharma imagined the rustling of alien trees in the wake of his passing, the way water parted beneath and behind him as he dove down to stroke himself against its surface, and he gasped, "Tarn, Tarn, I'm going to—" 

"I want it, love," the tank moaned, looking down into Pharma's eyes as the jet spasmed beneath him and began to empty his spike into Tarn's depths. Tarn roared with ecstasy as the feeling of the hot spill inside of him brought him to his peak; now he clenched hard around his mate, urging more out of him as his protoform strained to clasp him tighter. 

Detachedly, Pharma thought that perhaps he should be more impressed or engaged, given how easily he'd seduced the commander of the DJD and how he had utterly transported the tank with only a single, simple climax. His mind was on other things, however, and he suspected that Tarn was not finished with him yet. 

Tarn still seemed broken after his shattering overload, sitting slumped on top of Pharma while air heaved through his ventilation system and his eyes remained dim. "I love you," he whispered tenderly. "I love you so much." 

"Tarn," Pharma said, as if he wanted nothing else but to hear his beloved's name in his own mouth. 

After several long minutes spent collecting himself and gazing lovingly down at his treasure, Tarn finally lifted himself off of the jet and let his valve finish folding itself up. Pharma's spike had long since withdrawn back into its housing. The tank sat down on the corner of the mattress. 

Suspecting what his enemy might be interested in next, Pharma spread his legs wide, wider, thinking of the smell of sunlight on dry rock and dew-strewn grass to make his own petals begin to curl outward as if in search of pleasure. Tarn moaned again and moved as if he had no volition left in his body; he reverently touched the valve with both hands, tempting it to open fully with the same kind of gentle play that he had used on himself. Pharma remembered the little wet length that had teased him open before, the sucking opening around it that drank his oil from his spreading protoform, and felt unimpressed. It was difficult enough to use his memories of the simulator to fuel the false lust of his body, but the touch left him so utterly cold... 

He managed, somehow, and felt the atmosphere touching the private mesh of his open channel as Tarn gently slid his fingers in and out, encouraging it to spill more oil over itself. One of his hands left Pharma's groin, and the jet noticed that Tarn's erection was jutting hard from his array and probably had been for some time. Tarn shivered eagerly, his eyes closing as he smeared Pharma's drippings across the head of his spike, mingling them with the cleaning fluid that was trickling out of its hole. Then he began to lower his massive body down over his beloved, his size so much greater that Pharma looked up and saw only the middle of his chest, with its hateful golden brand. Tarn reached underneath himself and held his spike as he leaned down, angling it to catch the rim of Pharma's valve. 

The noise that Tarn made as he sank deep was so frail, so vulnerable, and Pharma managed to dredge up a moan in reply as he felt himself stretched wide around the tank's cable; it penetrated so far into his torso that he was shocked that he could contain it all and felt as if his body was deforming around its girth. He looked down between his legs and watched as it vanished inside of him until Tarn's body was pressed hard against the petals of his valve. 

Tarn moved, more gently than the thing that had penetrated him during the simulation had moved; he slid carefully in and out, breath heaving through his fans, and Pharma kept looking down, watching the root of the spike disappear and reappear inside of his body. He supposed that there was not much more effort needed from him, as the lubrication appeared sufficient and— 

"Is it good, love?" Tarn gasped above him, and Pharma realized that he still needed to put in the work of reassuring the tank that he wanted this. 

He reached up as far as he could to caress Tarn's torso. His legs needed to stay spread almost painfully wide to admit his false lover, so he could not wrap them around his captor's hips. "It's _so_ good!" he cried convincingly, so he hoped. "It's _so_ good! Oh please, please don't stop—" 

"I won't, love. I have you. I want this to be so good for you. You like it like this?" Another long, slow press inward. 

Pharma wanted him to finish quickly. "Faster, faster, oh, I need it faster—" Tarn sped up, grunting now and again as his powerful thrusts began to heave his smaller lover up and down the bed. "Come in me, Tarn, I want it, I need to feel it—" And, as if his word was utterly Tarn's command, the tank pushed deep and breath sobbed through him as he released long gushes of his fluid. Now, while his captor was distracted, was the time to complete his deception - Pharma cried out again and again as he bucked underneath the tank, tightening and releasing his valve in imitation of what he had last done while unconscious, clawing at Tarn's flanks and screaming his name. 

They laid together for a few moments more, Tarn propped up on his elbows so as not to crush his lover underneath his weight. Then he carefully lifted himself up and over onto his side of the bed. His long spike pulled out of Pharma's cooling valve and slid across his thigh like a wet razorsnake as Tarn settled himself beside his beloved. Wordlessly, the tank reached out and pulled Pharma close, holding him tight to his plating for several long moments. 

Pharma hoped that he had judged his timing correctly. "Tarn, love?" 

"Yes, dearest?" Tarn's voice sounded ragged around the edges, as if emotion was making him tremble. 

"Can you do me a little favor?" 

"Anything. Anything for you. Ask." 

"Could you leave me hooked up to the simulator through the night? Only until morning." Being too greedy would lose him everything, he knew. 

"When will you sleep, treasure?" 

"I can log myself out anytime, once I get tired of it. And then I'll be back here beside you." He would never be tired of it. And the last place that he would ever want to be was back in their bed. 

Tarn still seemed doubtful. "I worry about your health. Too much VR is dangerous—" 

"I'm a doctor, love; I know how much a frame can handle. Trust me?" 

"...Yes. Of course I do." 

He stood and carefully cleaned them both, then reattached the chains on Pharma's legs. Pharma tried not to let his desperation show as Tarn logged in and released the software for his beloved's use. 

Pharma flew all night long, and the wind tasted of victory. 

He needed to keep up the charade after that, though, to have all those uninterrupted hours of joy. He spoke sweetly to his enemy, happily took fuel from his hand, invited and eagerly received lovemaking. In the shower, he was so delighted to have his captor wash him that the act of scrubbing him down made Tarn accidentally aroused; Pharma did nothing to discourage him and the tank picked him up and held him against a wall while the solvent rained down across his back, legs spread wide to brace himself as he thrust upward harder and harder. 

Pharma curled into his arms and wondered how his body was capable of taking it, how he could withstand Tarn's lust and not burst inside. But he didn't care. He didn't care. If his body broke while in use, then it would do so in service of the simulator, the one thing worth living for. Tarn cried out his name as he spilled so copiously that Pharma felt it dripping out of his strained valve, splashing down onto the tile below to be washed away by the spray. 

After Tarn had cleaned him up and apologized repeatedly and locked him back into his chains, he sat on the bedside and said, "Soon we will need to work on releasing you from these. Slowly, at first, I think. It has been so long since you were fully unbound." 

Pharma was a little surprised to find himself considering the act with trepidation. He had been here for so long - years, he thought. These things were comfortably familiar - his chains, his bed, his database, his autofeeder, his precious simulator, and the mech that he both hated and knew more deeply than any other. He had learned this small world well; he knew how to live within it, even though there had been a wider world before he'd been captured and crushed beneath despair. He would never be able to return to that world. What waited for him beyond this place, without his chains? 

"And you told me once," Tarn continued, "that if I loved you, I would take off my mask. And I do love you, and I will...but give me a little time. I have lived inside of it for so long; it is more my face than the thing beneath it." 

"When you're ready, then, love." It would be quite a point to score, if he could tempt Tarn to remove his mask, but Pharma was no longer interested in that game. 

Tarn stroked his cheek (Pharma reminded himself to lean into the touch and not away) and then took his hand, looking shyly downward. "I also...would ask you to bond with me, dearest." 

"I would love nothing more." Words, empty but useful. Soon he could have anything that he wanted from his enemy. It would only cost a little more of himself. 

Tarn choked on a sob. "Thank you. Thank you." 

The next day clearly began an extended hunt, as Tarn turned on the autofeeder before leaving their room. He was gone for several agonizing days, during which Pharma had only the well-worn database to entertain himself with as he cursed whatever it was that kept Tarn away for so long. When the Decepticon reappeared, he was covered in grime and exhausted; he only had the energy to clean himself and briefly make love to his captive mate, after which he fell asleep before turning on the simulator. Pharma stayed awake all night and continued to silently curse Tarn and everything in the cruel, hateful world. He had to pretend that he didn't mind the next morning, when Tarn turned the autofeeder back on and left for another two days. By the time he heard the doors opening again, Pharma was in mental agony. 

Something was different, though, when Tarn stepped through the door. He moved slowly, as if half in a dream, face turned downward as though deep in thought. Briefly, he looked up at Pharma, but his strangeness prevented the jet from greeting him as usual. Turning away, as if his body was moving without him, Tarn dropped a datapad onto his side of the bed and went over to the large cabinet where he kept his fuel and other supplies. He opened it and left it open. He turned to the server, transforming his fingertips into claws, and before Pharma could even get past the horror of the threat to his beloved simulator, Tarn had ripped off the panel on the front of the case, baring the internals. The tank turned to the bedside, pulling a small datachip out of his wrist port and putting it down on the nightstand. Still in shock, Pharma looked up at him as Tarn removed the autofeeder tube from his side and then turned his head so that he could unfasten all the sensory feeds from the base of his helm. Then he demagnetized all the chains, unlocked the cuffs around Pharma's wrists and ankles, and left the room, still utterly absent from himself. 

Pharma laid there for several minutes, not daring to move. Surely this was a test of some kind, though Tarn's attitude had been so odd. The correct choice was to do nothing, to wait for his tormentor to come back and reattach all of the equipment. _My loyal one_ , Tarn would say. _I knew you wouldn't run._ Tarn prized loyalty; surely he would want his future conjunx to display it. 

...However, Pharma had been cruelly deprived of the simulator and thought that surely, as long as he didn't leave the room, it wouldn't count as running. He could link himself back up without concern. He sat up and found his eye caught by the datachip, which had clearly been put there for him. Curious, he put it in his own wrist port - how strange, to have control over the mechanisms in his wrists and hands again! - and discovered that it contained admin-level codes to all locked doors in the ship and all shuttles, a schematic of the entire vessel with rooms clearly labeled, and navigational coordinates for over a dozen neutral or allied locations that might be accepting of an Autobot. 

Inside of him, something long thought dead began to stir. He remembered flying without a simulator; he imagined flying in a shuttle, flying away from this hellish prison with all its fakery and misery to a place where he could stand beneath an open sky again. Something in the way that Tarn had gone about freeing him made him suspect that perhaps this was a genuine offer of escape. 

He looked at the server and realized that Tarn had ripped it open to give him access to the hard drive stacks, which stored all the precious data, so that he could take them if he wanted them. He gutted the machine, shoving all of them into his subspace, and then he turned to the cabinet to fill the rest of his storage with fuel cubes. 

And something else that he saw there gave him pause - part of the cabinet that he had never seen Tarn open. Hanging from a peg on the rear of the compartment was a pair of large rings made of tough but flexible cable, the larger one colored a medical red-orange and the smaller one the same gold as Tarn's accents. He lifted one slightly and saw the hidden combination lock that kept it closed. 

...Collars. Matching ones, with Tarn displaying the color of his medic and Pharma pointedly not forced to wear Decepticon purple. 

Hanging on other pegs and piled up below the collars were the rest of the equipment that Tarn had clearly dreamed of using with his future mate. Chastity devices and gags, sized for Tarn. Several widths of magnetic plugs, sized for Pharma. A coiled electro-whip. Piles and piles of soft, strong cable, perfect for decorative bindings, some of it in purple, most of it in red-orange. All of it had a thin layer of undisturbed dust across it. 

...How long had Tarn been dreaming of this life of loving mutual ownership? Since before the kidnapping? Had he watched that dust build up over the years as he lost hope of seeing those collars in use - of kneeling to receive discipline and pain from a kindly hand? Had he looked at these things each time he had gone to the cabinet to get fuel, imagining himself lifting his chin in pride to show his master-slave's mark of possession around his throat while hiding a spike-lock under his armor? 

Pharma wanted to be disgusted, but perhaps his long knowledge of his captor made sympathy twist inside of his spark. Tarn knew what kind of creature he was. He craved taming, craved another's control to help him settle the chaos inside of himself. He wanted peace and purification and the clean erasure of obedience. Pharma imagined having all that vast power - all the authority of the DJD commander - bound and at his mercy, an O-ring vox-lock keeping his legendary voice silent and his mouth open to be used. And Tarn wanted to be used. He wanted Pharma to use him. 

He turned from the collection and put all the fuel in his subspace, unsure of what to think or feel. 

As he walked toward the door, he caught sight of the datapad that Tarn had discarded on the bed. It was frozen at the end of a video of Megatron, standing at a podium. Ordinarily, he had no interest at all in what his captor's master said, but something, some solemnity in Megatron's face - something defeated? - made him pause and rewind the clip to its beginning. 

He watched it. He watched it again. And then he broke out laughing so hard that he had to sit down on the bed, holding the pad against his chest. 

_The Decepticon Cause had fallen._

More sure than ever that his freedom was genuine, he sent the codes ahead of himself and was gratified to find that the door obeyed his command. He walked through Tarn's office and then cautiously opened the door to the hallway. 

It was deserted. He looked both ways, but there was nothing - only a sound, a rising wail of pain and grief with a hideous chemical undertone, as if the sound itself were _corroding_ , and then the hammering of feet running at a cross intersection far away, the tangling of voices— 

"What is he— Why did he—"  
"Tarn! _Tarn!_ What are you _doing??_ "  
"Get him out of there, dammit! Get him _out!_ Tarn! _Tarn, don't die!_ " 

He could not say what the voices meant, but he felt certain that it was no concern of his. He turned in the opposite direction, toward the shuttle bays. 

It was time for him to fly.


End file.
